The development of the body-cavity and the formation of the _ chordula_ in the higher vertebrates is, like that of the _ gastrula,_ chiefly modified by the pressure of the food-yelk on the embryonic structures, which forces its hinder part into a discoid expansion. These cenogenetic modifications seem to be so great that until twenty years ago these important processes were totally misunderstood. It was generally believed that the body-cavity in man and the higher vertebrates was due to the division of a simple middle layer, and that the latter arose by cleavage from one or both of the primary germinal layers. The truth was brought to light at last by the comparative embryological research of the Hertwigs. They showed in their _Cœlom Theory_ (1881) that all vertebrates are true enterocœla, and that in every case a pair of cœlom-pouches are developed from the primitive gut by folding. The cenogenetic chordula-forms of the craniotes must therefore be derived from the palingenetic embryology of the amphioxus in the same way as I had previously proved for their gastrula-forms. The chief difference between the cœlomation of the acrania (_amphioxus_) and the other vertebrates (with skulls—craniotes) is that the two cœlom-folds of the primitive gut in the former are from the first hollow vesicles, filled with fluid, but in the latter are empty pouches, the layers of which (inner and outer) close with each other. In common parlance we still call a pouch or pocket by that name, whether it is full or empty. It is different in ontogeny; in some of our embryological literature ordinary logic does not count for very much. In many of the manuals and large treatises on this science it is proved that vesicles, pouches, or sacs deserve that name only when they are inflated and filled with a clear fluid. When they are not so filled (for instance, when the primitive gut of the gastrula is filled with yelk, or when the walls of the empty cœlom-pouches are pressed together), these vesicles must not be cavities any longer, but “solid structures.”